this desk was not made for 21st century american thunder thighs.
It’s a cloudy Thursday morning as I sit behind a teensey tinsey desk obviously made in an era before Oreos and box wine made all teachers’ thighs expand like the Roman empire, staring at the school calendar like it holds the the secrets of the universe. Seventeen school days until we are released from hell, if you don’t count the day we have to make up thanks to the fact that (just like last year and the year before that) the school system has severely underestimated Texans’ inability to drive in even .00001 millimeters of snow.
Just seventeen days until I am free. No more hooking my computer up to my hotspot so I can surf for random crap to One Click Buy on Amazon.com without the Administrators of Death finding out. No more hiding behind the bookshelf as Principal Asshole presses his face to the tiny window in my door, trying to decipher whether or not I am implementing the school plan of creating a “safe zone” in my classroom where all the miniature Crips can hang out together in a cluster of blue clad brotherhood and safely plan how they’re going to jump the short Hispanic kid after school behind the dilapidated ice cream stand (the same stand where you can get a free baggie of marijuana with a minimum purchase of three pounds of crack). And I work in a special needs classroom. God save the teachers in gen ed. It’s sort of like the difference between working in the psychiatric ward versus the overcrowded general population at your friendly neighborhood penitentiary. At least I have the legal right to restrain the little brats if they try to shank me with a sharpened magic marker. All the gen ed teachers can do is hide in their built in cabinets and pray to be saved by the bell before they drop the hand sanitizer. Okay, it’s not THAT bad, but hey, hyperbole is fun!
“Or NOT!” being the pertinent declaration
Every end of the school year marks a time of wonder and joyful tears for teachers, especially those of us who can’t step outside of our heavily guarded classrooms without the chance of recreating the pimpcar-meets-prostitute scene in Grand Theft Auto. (Teachers are actually worth less than prostitutes in this neighborhood.) But this year is particularly marvelous for me, because I have made a profound decision: I’m not coming back.
It may not seem like such a big deal, the concept of not returning to a job that you despise with every fiber of your being, a job that drives you to pop four Xanax before you climb out of your car every morning and to carry a backup bottle of Klonopine on your keychain. But it is, because getting away from teaching is like catching a bus at the “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here” sign and heading straight to the Pearlie Gates.
It’s not even the kids that really get to me, despite their proclivity for greeting me with “hey, ho” –it’s the administration who finds something wrong with every single thing I do. Like today, when I received my final evaluation, and the principal felt the need to mark me “below satisfactory” in the area of “engages students in critical, high level thinking.” I teach kids with IQs they can count on their fingers and toes. At fifteen years old we’re still working on adding two quarters together (though they are quite proficient at punching each other in the balls). What do you want me to do? Teach them Behavioral Economics? Do a study of Tolstoy’s works? Teach them to sing the alphabet song without mixing up G and P? In the vernacular of my students, “Bitch, please!”
So my decision is made: I’m getting out of this biz and I ain’t never coming back. Never again will I have to smile and say “thank you Little La’Johnny’avon for your participation” when told that the junk in my trunk is the bunk that he wunk. Never again will I have to nod my head and keep my mouth shut as a principal informs me that they are marking me down because they didn’t see “student led instruction” in a room full of intellectually disabled teenaged gangstas with pants hanging at knee level who spend the day throwing gang signs to one another as they practice writing their names.
Goodbye, America. Hello, Third World. Welcome to my un-American Dream.
Not Your Momma's Dream 